Gender gap: Los Angeles City Hall women paid 83 cents for every $1 that men get

The gender gap is still a dominant presence in the city of Los Angeles government workforce, with female employees earning 83 cents for every $1 paid to men, according to new figures released Thursday by City Controller Ron Galperin.

Galperin released a host of statistics about the gender gap in the city workforce as part of Women’s History Month.

“What we found confirms what many of us already know,” Galperin said in a statement. “While we have made great strides to close the wage gap, there is still much more work ahead of us to achieve true parity.”

Galperin said the figures in “Women@Work, The Status of Women in LA City Government,” were developed from data on his ControlPanelLA website, providing the first snapshot of women working for the city.

Men dominate in the city’s law enforcement departments, which tend to be higher paid than other agencies — police (81 percent men) and fire (98 percent men) — as well as in skilled trades, port pilots and as gardeners.

Only six of the 41 general managers are women and, perhaps more telling, there is only one woman, Councilwoman Nury Martinez, on the 15-member Los Angeles City Council and none holding the three citywide elected positions, mayor, controller and city attorney.

Galperin’s review showed that his office, the Library Department and the City Administrative Office have the most women workers, while the least are in police, fire and Street Services.

The municipal workforce’s wage gap is better than the national average, but worse than the city of Los Angeles average for all workers, public and private, according to U.S. census data. The national average is 77 cents for women nationally, but 92 cents in Los Angeles and 85 cents in California, according to census data compiled by the National Partnership for Women and Families.

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Patricia Bellasalma, president of the California National Organization for Women, said even though Galperin’s figures show the city is better than the national average, there is still work that needs to be done.

“It is still unacceptable,” Bellasalma said. “We are pleased the controller did this study because now we can find out what jobs have issues, and we can talk about the process to make improvements.”

Bellasalma said Los Angeles, like other cities, has been locked into a narrow view about the arduous nature of police and fire work, when women have shown they can handle the job.

“I would suggest that is more about male presumption than the real nature of the work,” she said.

Among other things, most fire calls now are for emergency medical treatment.

“The department requires its work force to be full firefighters before getting EMT (emergency medical technician) training. That strikes me as a huge waste of money,” Bellasalma said.

Mayor Eric Garcetti said the figures show that more needs to be done “if we want our city government to look like the rest of Los Angeles.”

“I am committed to paving the way for the next generation of L.A.’s civic leaders, particularly the next generation of women,” Garcetti said in a written statement. “The goal is full equality in City Hall.”

Garcetti noted his chief of staff and half of his deputy mayors are women.